"It is an awful avowal, take it altogether," she said, soberly. "I almost wish you had not brought it to me. I never shall feel quite the same after this. How could a woman of that description so affect a man like you?"
"I am not going to discuss that," I answered. "Is it worth publishing, that's the point? I have altered every name, you see, so no one not in the secret will recognize a single person involved. It's a rather unusual collection of occurrences, don't you think?"
She assented with a nod to the last proposition, and said as for the literary "market" she supposed in its present state it was not over squeamish.
"The success of the season is 'Quo Vadis,'" she added, "and I wasn't able to read half of it. There is at least a lesson to be learned from this experience of yours, if men will only heed the warnings."
"Thank you," I said, with polite irony, though I didn't agree with her about Sienkiewicz' great work. "Can you think of anything I might add, to round out the tale, as it were?"
A flush came into her face and a slight smile to the corners of her mouth.
"Yes. You might say that 'Statia' admitted to you afterwards that the letters signed 'Alice Brazier' were her own, copied by a friend in the handwriting of the latter and sent from her residence."
My surprise, which was complete, turned the smile into a little laugh at my expense.
"And you might say also," she continued, "that during your absence with 'Marjorie,' your friend 'Tom's' sister was taking lessons in typewriting and became quite proficient in that art. And that she told you, whenever you wanted to take another journey, and needed assistance in literary work, she would apply for the position rather than have you made the victim of any designing creature of her sex."
"Statia!" I cried, "you have entirely forgiven me?"